


something like home

by nightwideopen



Series: Winterhawk Bingo [5]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Bingo, Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020, Clint Barton's Farm, Domestic Fluff, Graphic description of an injury, Hard of Hearing Clint Barton, M/M, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Mentions of brainwashing, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Winterhawk Bingo 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26487361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightwideopen/pseuds/nightwideopen
Summary: After the fall of the Triskelion, Clint retreats to his last refuge, the farm house in Iowa that he grew up in. On the way there, he finds an injured dog on the road leading to the Barton farm.Spoiler alert: it's not a dog.It's Bucky Barnes.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Series: Winterhawk Bingo [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858948
Comments: 58
Kudos: 259
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020, Winterhawk Bingo Round Two





	something like home

**Author's Note:**

> UM, THIS IS THE LONGEST FIC I'VE WRITTEN SINCE 2015? i'm giving myself a round of applause for that and also a round of applause for finishing it
> 
> this is a really generous mash up of 616/MCU where Clint is comic Clint except he's lived MCU Clint's life. he's deaf in one ear and grew up in a circus but he's a shield agent and Bucky was Steve's younger sidekick in the war but he pretty much went through MCU Bucky's life from the fall up to the events of tws
> 
> also the working title for this was 'holy fuck it's a wolf' 
> 
> that's very important
> 
> enjoy!
> 
>  **Bucky Barnes Bingo Square filled:** C4 Canon Divergence 
> 
> **Winterhawk Bingo Square filled:** N4 Bucky makes Clint coffee

Clint’s been driving like a bat out of hell for eight hours. 

It’s been two days since Natasha texted him a code black from a burner phone while he was deep in cover in Malaysia and the agents he’d been with had turned on him. The batteries in his hearing aid are on the fritz but he hasn’t been able to stop for anything besides gas since he hot wired this god-awful Jeep back in Delaware. He’s nearly to Waverly anyway, to the shithole farmhouse he grew up in that he knows is safe because his father never did anything by the book. There’s no paper trail, no bank statements of any kind. There’s no proof that anyone by the name Barton ever lived there. And while he’d prefer to not have this house be his last resort, it’s armed and stocked and, most importantly, a secret from everyone. Including S.H.I.E.L.D.. 

Including Natasha.

There’s a fork in the road about five miles out from the road that leads to the farm, except the road to the farm is covered by underbrush and tree branches and about fifteen years of overgrown plants. That’s the way that Clint turns, and that’s when he sees it: a trail of blood just past the curtain of leaves that’s turned shades of yellow and orange as autumn creeps along. The ominous trail leads deeper into the woods that Clint used to play in as a child, the woods that he himself has scraped his knees and broke his arm and busted his nose and bled in. He knows the twists and turns, even after all these years, and he knows there’s a thicket just behind the tree directly ahead of him to the left, and he’s terrified of what he’s going to find there.

Clint doesn't remember setting any traps for bears, deer, or otherwise—mostly because he _wouldn’t_ —because he feels pretty confident in the security of the house itself, of the perimeter he set up and deterrents and alarms that only register human activity, courtesy of Tony Stark. The beginning of the road is too far out for him to bother with, seeing as the actual road ends two miles before the woodland path to the farm entrance. If anything, it’s a unlucky creature that’s been hit by a car and has stumbled off into the woods to die.

Because no one knows to look here, and no one knows to venture past the weeds and low hanging branches that cover up the road to the Barton’s. Clint made sure of that.

Still, just to be cautious, Clint parks the stolen Jeep deep in the woods about a half a mile away on the other side of the road and walks back with just his backpack and bow. He finds a loose arrow that miraculously fell into the passenger seat and keeps it nocked as he creeps past the tree line. He follows the trail of blood, straining his one good ear to make sure his boots don't crunch on leaves and twigs. He's tense, drawn tight like his bowstring but he forces his shoulders to relax. And eventually the blood trail thins out, then pools in the dirt, and Clint comes up on a few bloody paw prints.

Oh _no_.

Around the old oak tree that Clint’s name is carved into lies a dog. It's a great big dog, covered in blood and dirt and leaves, with one of its hind legs caught in a bear trap. The wound is gruesome, not the worst thing Clint has ever seen, but it’s a _dog_. The leg that’s caught in the trap is nothing but mangled fur and muscle, blood still dripping onto the dirt. It must’ve struggled hard, must’ve tried to chew its own foot off and the sadness pangs in Clint again. He can’t help but pout at the sight of it, and after a moment more, he notices that the dog is already down a leg, its left front leg completely gone and long healed. And, well, now it's down two legs. 

Clint drops his bow, slowly and warily inspecting the trap. The dog is still breathing—he can tell by the rise and fall of its belly—but it looks to be unconscious. He doesn't want to startle it, so he doesn't touch it, but he does the opposite of what he's been doing so far and snaps a twig under his boot, purposefully rustles a pile of leaves nearby. The dog stirs, and once it catches sight of Clint it lets out a deep, feral snarl that tapers off into a long, low growl. It's the sound of pure fear and aggression, and it makes Clint's blood go cold. 

“Hey. It's okay.” He puts his hands up and crouches down slowly, making himself as non-threatening as possible. He doesn't have any food on him, can't win over the dog’s affections with treats, but he’s pretty good at making himself look like nothing to worry about. It’s how he’s gotten by this far in life. “I'm gonna help you out. I'm gonna come a little closer, okay?”

He takes one knee-step forward, away from the dog’s head and towards the leg in the trap. The dog tries to pull its leg away then whimpers violently, and it takes everything in Clint to not reach out and pull at the leg to keep it in place. He doesn't fancy getting his hand eaten after traveling for almost three days to get here, to safety.

He tries to keep his voice as even as possible when he says, “It’s alright. I’m gonna get you out of there, it’s okay.”

Still, he has to get close to pry the jaws of the trap apart, and not for the first time he finds himself cursing the inhumanity of them. It’s undignified and it’s cowardice and it causes innocent animals hours of pain— Clint can only imagine how long this poor dog has been stuck here and his heart aches. He gets closer, slowing down when the growls get louder, waiting for them to subside and moving closer again, repeating the process until his fingers brush the steel of the trap. The dog snarls, jerks again, then whimpers and collapses, making a pitiful sound in its throat. Clint takes that as his opportunity to pull the jaws of the trap apart until they fall open, freeing the dog’s leg. It pulls away quickly, dragging itself across the forest floor, still whimpering with pain, but finding the energy to growl at Clint even though he’s not moving.

It’s afraid, and Clint is afraid, and they’re trapped here in a bubble of fear with nowhere else in the world to go.

Then it tries to stand up, but as Clint suspected, it can’t walk on two legs. But that’s not for lack of trying, as it pushes up onto its one front paw, but the injury is too extensive, too painful, and the moment the dog tries to put any weight on it, its entire body crumbles back onto the ground with a pitiful sound being ripped from its throat. 

Clint realizes belatedly he has to get moving, too. 

He stands up quickly, keeping his eyes on the dog and reaching for his bow. He gets snarled at again, but this time he’s more upset than afraid. 

He can’t just leave it here.

The dog can’t walk, that much is for sure. But Clint also can’t go waltzing into a vet’s office while he’s on the run. For all he knows he’s being hunted by Hydra, by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were two-faced Nazis, by his coworkers, by his _friends_. He can’t trust anyone right now, and he sure as hell can’t trust that he won’t be spotted, even all the way out in the-middle-of-nowhere, Iowa. If he’s learned anything in the past six years, it’s that S.H.I.E.L.D. has eyes everywhere, and he can’t give away the last place in the world that he has to call something like home.

The dog whimpers again.

_He can’t just leave it here._

“Fuck.”

Clint makes a carefully calculated decision, slings his bow over his back so that the string is across his chest, and he approaches the dog once more. It’s not growling anymore, but it’s still trying to stand up, falling down onto its belly and letting out a pained whine every time.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you, I just wanna help you. Let me help you.”

He gets an arm’s length away and reaches out his hand ever so slowly, slower than he’s ever moved. And Clint stays _absolutely still_. The muscle memory of his sniper skills settles in, and he patiently waits the dog out, for it to see him and his outstretched hand. It does eventually, eyeing him with bared teeth, but still he doesn’t move. Then slowly, ever so slowly does the dog stretch out it’s neck to sniff his hand. It growls, low and unsure, but then it whines once more and drops its head. 

So Clint reaches out. He watches the dog’s entire body tense up as he lays a hand on its back, a growl rumbling through it. Its fur is coated in mud and leaves and blood, and it’s not anything he can run his hands through. He can’t even tell what kind of dog it is underneath all of the filth. But he takes his time, keeps contact and waits for the dog to settle down again. And by some miracle, he manages to get his arms under the dog and lift it into his arms. 

Now all that’s left is a five mile hike through the woods with what feels like at least a hundred-and-eighty pounds of almost-dead dog weight in his arms.

Clint takes a deep breath. “Alright buddy, you and me, let’s do it.”

By the time Clint actually makes it to the farm he wants to lie down in his bed and never get up again. His body aches from his neck to the soles of his feet and he’s regretting every decision he’s ever made that’s gotten him to this point. Luckily enough for him, the back door to the farmhouse is automatic and only opens with a retinal scan, so he’s able to heft the dog through the door without much incident and deposit it into a corner of the living room without having to take the chance of putting it down and picking it back up again. 

“Ok, here we go.”

The moment the dog hits the ground it’s scooting back and growling at him. 

“Okay, you don’t need me anymore, got it. Hungry?”

It growls again.

“Cool.”

Against his better judgement, he leaves the dog so that he can trudge upstairs and shower. Well, not really _against_ — All of the doors are securely locked and the dog can’t exactly walk on its own. Clint figures it needs a little while to settle, put its hackles down, feel safe. Besides, it’s been a long two and half days and it took him double the time to hike the trail than it would have were he not carrying an extra hundred-and-eighty pounds with him. 

When he stumbles out of the shower, steam trailing behind him, he feels slightly more refreshed. It feels so good to put _sweatpants_ on, holy shit he hates his tac pants. He means to forgo a shirt, but then thinks better of it, and throws a hoodie on, making sure to cover his neck. Clint loves dogs, but he _really_ doesn’t trust this one to refrain from ripping his throat out if it feels threatened. He definitely doesn’t see another picking-up-and-carrying incident happening any time soon. If ever.

The dog looks just as exhausted as he feels, slumped over in the same corner that Clint left him in, cowering and curled up around its wounds. Clint’s first thought is infection, that the wounds—especially that leg—need to be treated right away. But the moment the dog sees him it keeps up a steady growl until Clint stops walking and crouches down six feet away.

“You’re not gonna let me clean you up, huh?”

If the wound gets infected, the dog is probably going to die.

“You’re gonna make me have gone through all that for nothing, aren’t you?”

Clint sighs, leaves the dog to its devices, hoping and praying that a miracle occurs and the dog somehow heals on its own. 

First order of business: food. 

The house is stocked to the top with non-perishables; cans of soup and vegetables and different kinds of beans. Clint groans. He wants _pizza_.

He ends up making two cans of sweetcorn and finds a can of pumpkin for the dog. He’s going to have to head to a grocery store at some point and get actual food. Chicken and stuff. Maybe a steak. He looks down at his steaming bowl of corn, frowns. This simply isn’t going to cut it. The irony being, he’s the one who stocked this house, albeit five years ago. He was so brainwashed back then, taught by S.H.I.E.L.D. to only worry about survival and never comfort. The last thing Clint wants when holed up in a safehouse, miles from civilization, with no certainty of how long he’ll be there is to eat sixteen types of beans for days on end. That’s why he always brings sugary sweet snacks on missions, even if Natasha always steals half of them.

Well, used to. They won't be going on any S.H.I.E.L.D. sanctioned missions together anymore. 

God, he misses her.

He pours the pumpkin into one of his flatter bowls so that the dog doesn’t have to lift its head as much, but also so that it doesn’t make so much of a mess as it would if the food were on a plate. Clint stops at exactly the same place as where he left and sets the bowl down in front of him. He starts to slide it forward, waiting for the dog to growl. It doesn’t, just eyes him wearily, snout twitching as though it wants to bare its teeth again. But Clint manages to get the bowl next to the dog and back away slowly to eat his own measly dinner. 

Well, at least now he’s got company.

The next day, Clint sets about taking inventory of everything in the farm house and making the place slightly more comfortable. His bedroom was reasonably dusty, as is the rest of the house, and he gives it a cursory once over with a feather duster that he finds in the back of the bathroom cupboard. It’s the most cleaning he’s done in probably his entire lifetime, but his lungs will thank him for it later, because he certainly doesn’t trust opening the windows right now, still on edge from being shot at by his coworkers and chased into his very last hidey-hole like a scared bunny.

Once he’s taken stock of exactly what food is in the house, what weapons are stored in the basement, and the functionality of the security system, he does one last perimeter check and then collapses onto the sofa for the evening. The dog is growling somewhere behind him, not a friendly sound by any means but somehow Clint finds it comforting to know he’s not entirely alone.

“You don’t have to keep growling at me, you know.” He knows the dog doesn’t know what he’s saying, but he’s already going out of his mind not having anyone to talk to in this place. It’s too risky to try and hook up the cable for the television just yet. “I told you, I’m not gonna hurt you. I wanna help you. I thought I made that pretty clear.”

Somehow, as if the creature understands, it goes silent. 

Clint peers over the back of the couch and at the corner that the dog is lying in. It’s looking up at him mournfully, its eyes the only thing visible through the mud covering its face. Christ, he wants to give it a bath so badly. Or a hug. He thinks they both need one of those.

“Maybe we can take some baby steps tomorrow, huh? Let’s just rest for now.”

The dog whuffs a sigh, almost something like a reply, and Clint heads up to bed.

The dog doesn’t make much progress over the next few days, still sluggish and out of it, growling at Clint every time he so much as steps into the room. 

But there’s something about having a giant dog—even if it’s temporarily incapacitated—that makes it easier for Clint to settle into the farmhouse. The whole way here he thought he was going to have to lock himself in his room to avoid the memories of every bad thing that’s happened here, but he gets so caught up in cleaning up, making a list of desired food items, and coming up with a way to get in and out of the grocery store undetected that the first few days are nothing more than a standard stay at any other safe house. By now he might’ve just succumbed to the rows and rows of canned beans and wallowed in the knowledge that he’s well and truly trapped here. But the dog in the corner of the living room keeps giving him forlorn glances and half-hearted whimpers, seeming to glare at Clint every time he’s forced to eat a bowl of mushy canned pumpkin. 

Four days after their arrival, Clint throws on the most inconspicuous hoodie he can find and one of Barney’s old baseball caps.

Another small miracle is the pickup truck in the garage. It’s the truck that he brought all of the weapons and food in when he came by to stock the house some five years ago. He’d walked back to the main road, carefully destroying the path that leads to the property, and covered the fork in the road with as much shrubbery as he could manage. Then Natasha had picked him up at a diner in town, looking as though she shouldn’t even be this close to Clint’s safest safe house. 

That was back when he was still working on getting her to trust him.

The truck gets him there and back in one piece, and Clint spends the whole drive back looking in the rearview mirror for anyone following him. It was bad enough that he had to use a regular checkout counter to avoid the security cameras at self checkout, but he still can’t be too careful. 

There’s a snarl when he opens the front door, and he rounds the couch with an armful of groceries, giving the dog an unimpressed look.

“This is my most safest safe house, buddy. Top notch security system installed by yours truly. No one gets in or out of here without me knowing about it. Take a load off, will you?”

The dog whines at licks at its wounded leg. Clint really needs to get a look at that.

Good thing he bought some fresh meats.

Once the groceries are squared away and Clint all but inhales a microwavable pizza, he tears open one of the packages of raw steak and upends half of it into the bowl he’s been using for the dog. Optimistic, he grabs the first aid kit on the way.

“Okay.” Clint settles into his customary crouch, letting the dog sniff the air and figure out that the food Clint has now is better than some squishy pumpkin. “I’ve got bribery food and you have to let me take a look at that leg.”

Maybe Clint is going crazy, but the more he talks to the dog the more he feels like it understands him.

He slides the bowl across the floor just an inch, and the dog cranes its neck to get a good sniff of it. It whines, begging, stretching out its one front paw in an attempt to grab the bowl. So Clint brings his whole body closer, inching towards the dog’s leg with the kit. 

And that… well that earns him a wonderfully vicious snarl.

“Stop that,” he says sternly, moving closer. The dog doesn’t stop, so he moves the bowl closer. “Just let me help you, pal. Let me help.”

He doesn’t know how long it takes, the game of scooting the bowl and scooting himself, but his knees and back are aching and the dog looks just about ready to kill him for a taste of the meat. But soon the bowl is right under its nose and Clint is closer to the dog than he’s been since carrying him and holy _shit_ is this dog massive. It’s just about the size of Clint, something he’s not used to. He’s used to being the biggest guy around, if not the tallest. So while the dog is distracted by the food, Clint does his best to work quickly on cleaning and wrapping the wound. It’s been four days, so it’s not bleeding anymore, but the disinfect he pours over it makes the dog whimper loudly. It tries to pull away, but it’s not growling and still has its face in the bowl, so Clint carries on, heart hammering. 

Luckily for the dog, there weren’t any broken bones, just the torn up flesh and muscle that’s already started to heal over itself. There aren’t any signs of infection, so Clint cleans it off best he can with the antiseptic wipes from the kit and wraps the leg with gauze, all before the dog has licked the bowl clean.

“See?” he says, almost out of breath. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Clint sits for a second, collapsing onto the wood floor with his legs splayed in front of him. He has no idea what he’s doing, why he’s brought this poor creature into his house and his life when he can’t do anything for it besides a half-assed nursing job. All he knew was that he couldn’t leave it there to die, trapped and helpless, undignified. It seems to be doing much better now, despite still curled up in the same muddy corner that Clint dropped it in when they arrived. But he doesn’t know what he’s going to do once the dog is fully healed, once it can walk on its own again. Clint doesn’t know if he can get it to trust him enough to stay with him.

Does he even want that?

As if hearing his thoughts, the dog slowly reaches out with its snout, pushing its wet nose into Clint’s hand and nudging him until Clint catches on and pets its giant head. The mud is long dried and there’s no soft fur to pet by any means, but Clint is so stunned by the gesture and the display of trust that he can’t help but pet the dog with enthusiasm. He runs his hand over the dog’s ears, over the crown of its head, runs his fingers down it’s muzzle and bops him ever-so-gently on the nose.

“Aw,” he says fondly. “You like me.”

Clint swears on everything he loves that the dog rolls its eyes at him before dropping its head back onto the floor and drifting off to sleep.

It gets easier to be in the dog’s space after that, almost as if the dog has decided that it _wants_ Clint in its space. He’s happy to comply, feeding the dog bits of raw chicken and beef from his fingers, petting it where he can and getting licked up to his elbows. He hasn’t been growled at in a week, and he’s changed the gauze on the wound three times. It’s healing up nicely as well, if a little more quickly than Clint expected, and Clint thinks that in another few days the dog should be back on its feet again. But for now, Clint’s main concern is—

“You’re starting to stink up the house. You need a bath.”

The dog whines at him, avoiding eye contact and curling up closer on itself. 

“I’m serious! You can’t keep lying here caked in mud. Unless you’d rather I drag you out into the yard and hose you down.”

That earns Clint an even more broken whine.

“Exactly. Then come down the hall and I’ll make the bath water nice and warm and we’ll get you clean, okay? I might even let you up on the couch.”

The dog’s ears perk up, then flatten against its head, then perk back up again like it’s conflicted by its current situation. 

“Come on,” Clint urges, holding out his hand. His other hand is preoccupied with a Ziploc baggie full of steak cubes.

By some miraculous twist of fate, the dog actually pushes itself to its feet using its front leg, over balancing but catching itself on its injured leg. Clint rushes over to help, giving just enough space and warning so that the dog sees him coming.

“It'll be okay.” He puts an arm around the dog's middle and helps it hobble down the hall. “There you go.”

Getting down the hall and into the bathtub is a full affair that Clint hadn't mapped out perfectly. There's tripping and stumbling and scrabbling for grip on the porcelain of the tub. There's also water. A lot of water. Everywhere. And there's so much godforsaken mud.

Halfway through the bag of steak cubes is when the dog stops glaring at Clint for long enough that he can break out the soap. He has to keep the tap running and the drain open to stop the water from turning into mud itself, but eventually Clint’s scrubbing makes a difference and he actually starts to see fur. 

“Oh, wow look at you, huh?”

He's almost embarrassed about how awestruck he sounds, but the dog is a beautiful mixture of black and grey. The grey covers its body from head to tail, a large stripe of black running down its spine and surrounding its muzzle and eyes. It almost looks like it’s wearing a dark black mask over its face. Clint can't wait to pet it when the dog’s all fluffy and dry. 

Clint doesn't know how long it's been but he finally gives one last coat of suds and then reaches for the detachable showerhead for the final rinse. The dog looks content as the warm water rushes over its back, tilting its head back and leaning into the spray. Clint can’t help but smile fondly.

“Yeah, feels good, I know.”

Then Clint turns off the water and steps back to admire his handy work. The dog is taking up pretty much his entire bathtub, its black muzzle even more intimidating when it's not caked in mud. 

Then its pointy ears perk up once more.

And… holy fuck it's a wolf. 

It's not a dog. It's a wolf. In his bathtub. It’s just… absolutely _not_ a dog. What kind of dog would this even be? A Malamute? A Husky but twice as big? This thing is the size of _Clint himself_ , with its features even more distinct now that they're actually visible and—

“Oh, _fuck_.”

The wolf—the _wolf_ , what the _fuck_ —doesn’t look anymore inclined to eat Clint than it did before, but somehow he finds himself more afraid than when he thought he was simply housing an extremely large dog. Above anything, Clint just feels stupid that he didn’t notice. It’s obvious now, especially as the wolf stands up to shake itself off, with its large snout and pointed ears, its long lean body and thick-fur tail. Okay fine, a dog and a wolf have more in common than they do differences so it’s not that far-fetched but _still_. Holy _shit_. He’s an _idiot_.

“Oh, God. Okay.” Clint backs up until he falls onto the closed toilet lid. “Not a dog, got it. Wolf in my bathtub.”

Saying it out loud doesn’t make it any less bizarre. 

“Only you, Barton. Honestly.”

The wolf whines at him, pawing at the lip of the tub and looking three seconds from hefting itself over the edge and subsequently flooding Clint’s bathroom. He leaps to his feet, grabs four towels and spreads them out around the bathmat. Then he grabs the wolf around the middle and helps it out of the tub.

“Can I dry you off?” Clint asks stupidly as he approaches with a fifth towel. He’s not looking forward to this load of laundry. “Please don’t eat me.”

The wolf obviously doesn’t respond, just shakes off—soaking Clint’s t-shirt and shorts—and drops itself onto the pile of towels, presumably to take the weight off its still healing leg.

“Okay. Cool.”

And as Clint rubs his favorite purple towel over the fur of the two hundred pound wolf that he thought was a dog and brought into his last safe house to nurse back to health, he once again takes the time to reflect on every decision that’s brought him to this point. Consequently, he regrets every single one of them. 

What the fuck is he supposed to do with a _wolf?_

Apparently what you do with a wolf isn’t all that different to what you do with a dog. Clint keeps his end of the bargain and lets the wolf up onto the couch, mops up the now-empty muddy corner of the living room, and continues his routine of feeding it raw chicken and beef. He’s kind of glad he didn’t buy the two huge bags of dog food he was contemplating—it might’ve gotten his hand chewed off.

It only takes a couple more days for the wolf to start walking around on its injured leg, still hobbling along due to its missing front leg, but that doesn’t seem to stop it. That seems to be an injury that’s long gone and moved on from, and it just has to work up its strength back to walking on three legs. 

Clint finally hooked up the cable, too. His heart pounded for the whole two hours that he let it run without actually watching anything, terrified of Hydra agents descending on the house and killing them both. He doesn’t know when he started considering the wolf something to protect but—

It was probably around the time he hiked five miles through the woods carrying almost two hundred pounds and risking his life just to make sure the poor thing didn’t die at the hands of an inhumane trap.

They’re sitting on the couch, the wolf curled up close enough to Clint that he could pet it if he wanted to, but far enough that the wolf clearly _doesn’t_ want him to. So he doesn’t. Clint focuses on _Dog Cops_ and tries to think of what the hell he’s going to do when he has to be alone in this house, unsure of who to contact and who to trust so that he can maybe not die due to his place of work turning out to be a cover for the pinnacle of evil. 

The next morning when Clint stumbles down into the kitchen, the wolf is waiting for him.

It’s standing by the door, steady on its feet, tail swishing back and forth as it waits by the back door. It almost kind of breaks Clint’s heart, that it's ready to go. But he did what he’d meant to do, he saved the wolf’s life, and he supposes all good things come to an end.

“Alright, just let me get some coffee first.”

The wolf whines loudly, then paws at the door aggressively.

“Christ, okay. Not even gonna let me say goodbye? Fine, I see how it is.”

The wolf cocks its head at him as he opens the panel for the retinal scanner, then as soon as the door clicks open a few inches it takes off like a shot across the backyard and into the woods. Clint takes a moment to stand at the door, watch it disappear. Much his embarrassment, he starts to tear up, but no one’s around to see it so _fuck off_. He’s all alone now. Deep in the woods, the wolf howls happily, finally free once more. Still alive, thanks to Clint. He did a good thing, that’s all that matters. 

“Well, at least now I don’t have to buy ten pounds of raw meat every week,” Clint reasons. “Though I’ll definitely have to stop talking to myself out loud.”

He sets about making his coffee, still too tired to process much thought beyond _need caffeine_ and _bored as all hell._ He really should put together a schedule of some sort, or dig out some DIY projects from the garage so that he doesn’t actually go insane cooped up here by himself.

He should definitely invest in a pack of cards. Or a puzzle.

He could start working out?

No, definitely not.

Halfway through his third cup of coffee, when Clint has succumbed to the devastating loneliness of the secluded farmhouse, the back door starts to rattle. 

Clint reaches under the kitchen island for the handgun stashed there, and grabs a pan on his way past the stove. There’s a little window on the left side of the door, and he ducks under it, then peers through it without moving the blinds. He can’t see anything, no sign of anyone at the door, but it rattles again.

And then there’s a familiar whine.

And a flash of a fluffy tail.

“Oh my God.”

Clint drops his weapons and rushes to open the door. When he does, he's met with the sight of the wolf staring back at him. It lets out a bark that tapers off into a sad sounding howl, ducking its head and looking up at Clint through wide eyes.

“You're a secret softie, aren't you?”

The wolf bark-howls again.

“Come in then!”

Apparently that was all the invitation the wolf needed, and he's bowling over Clint and knocking him to the ground, barking gently and giving a great big lick to Clint's face before sitting its fluffy butt on his chest. It would be adorable if Clint could breathe. He digs his fingers into the thick—like, _really_ thick—fur at its sides, pushing gently so as not to provoke it. 

But if Clint didn't know any better, he'd say the wolf is just as attached to him as he is to the wolf. 

“Get off me you big lug, you're crushing my lungs.”

The wolf may have imprinted on him, duckling style. 

When Clint wakes up in the morning, the wolf is waiting at his door as if it had slept there all night, if it slept at all. It follows Clint to the kitchen, waits to be let out, and returns two hours later. It doesn’t greet Clint the same way it did that first day, but Clint always gets a cursory headbutt to his thigh, or a lick to his hands. They’re very small gestures of gratitude that Clint doesn’t know how to deal with, just responds to with a pet to the head, his hand ruffling through the thick fur between the wolf’s shoulders. It’s like having a dog. A really really big dog that can stretch up to his own full height at six-foot-three when it stands on its hind legs, but a dog all the same. 

Besides, it’s company. The wolf is trustworthy and loyal, and most importantly doesn’t talk back when Clint says something decidedly stupid.

After another week, the wolf becomes extremely cuddly. 

The first time Clint gets the wolf’s giant head in his lap he’s watching HGTV with a bowl of spaghetti resting on his chest and trying to keep his hands to himself. He's been feeling really on edge lately, endlessly twitching and needing to fidget with anything he can get his hands on. He’s heard that dog-types can sense things like that, maybe the tension in his muscles, the anxiety in his belly, or even his natural human desire to _pet the soft thing_. Either way, just when he feels as though he’s about to burst with it, the lump of fur plops onto his thighs and looks up at him as if to say, _Well? Go ahead._

And, well, yeah he's going to. How could he resist?

It's immediately calming, to feel the soft grey-black fur between his fingers for real. More than that, he feels honored by the display of trust and comfort. All they have here is each other, and the wolf seems to understand that, seems to be in tune with Clint's worries and his needs. It's reassuring and it's _weird_. He picked up this wolf on the side of the road, bleeding out and ready to kill anyone that dared to come near it.

Now Clint can't imagine being afraid of it.

“I'm glad we have each other,” he mutters fondly. He can barely hear himself, but he hears the answering huff of a sigh that the wolf gives him. “M’glad you're still here.”

And the weight of the wolf across his lap is safe enough that he falls asleep right there on the couch, spaghetti forgotten.

It’s winter before Clint knows it. It creeps in under the cracks in the doors, through the windows, into the floorboards. The cold rushes in with a snap, enveloping the farmhouse so completely that Clint wakes up one morning, teeth chattering, unable to remember what it felt like to be warm. 

That's because, of course, the heater's broken. 

Maybe today is a good day to stay in bed. Clint mournfully pulls the covers up and over his head, desperately trying to create more heat in the small space with his breathing. It works a little bit, if only making him so lightheaded from the lack of oxygen that his body starts to heat up to compensate. There are fleece blankets in the closet down the hall, he knows, but the idea of leaving his warm cocoon without a shirt or socks sounds so horrific that he just curls up further into a ball and groans helplessly. This _would_ happen to him, of course it would. Clint has always known that his life is a series of comedy and tragedy, and thankfully this is just one of the practical jokes that the universe likes to play on him. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating, doesn’t make him feel any less about his ridiculously narcissistic notion that everything and everyone is out to get him. 

Clint doesn’t have his hearing aid in, and he’s got his good ear pressed tightly against the pillow, so he doesn’t hear the scratching on the door until he turns over in an attempt to get comfortable.

Nothing like a needy wolf to keep you on schedule. 

But Clint doesn’t move. He feels bad—guilty—for not wanting to get up, but Christ he just wants to wallow for a second. The scratching stops for a minute, then starts up again, then becomes accompanied by whimpers and whines and Clint almost gets angry. Almost. It’s a near thing. The wolf is counting on him, he can’t fault it for that. 

“Okay!” he calls. “I’m coming, okay? I’m coming.”

He comes out of his cocoon, immediately regretting it as his entire body tenses from the sudden cold. Once he gets past the initial shock of it, he shuffles quickly over to the closet, grabs whatever hoodie his hand touches first, yanks on whatever socks are lying on the floor, and even pulls on the beanie that’s hanging off one doorknob for good measure. 

“ _Fuck_.”

It’s really cold.

And _he’s_ going to have to fix the heater.

Clint groans again. “Why me? Why?”

When he yanks open his bedroom door and makes to walk out, the wolf plants itself in the doorway and doesn’t move. It’s big enough and threatening enough that Clint doesn’t bother trying to squeeze through, he just stares at the wolf with an unimpressed look. It gets a little uncomfortable around the time where the wolf’s own expression starts to mirror his.

“What?”

Then the wolf starts to push him back into the room, headbutting his thighs and using its whole body to keep Clint from leaving the room.

“Hey, what are you— Stop it! Don’t you have to go out? What—”

Then the back of his knees hit the bed and he… he thinks he gets it. Clint wraps his arms around himself, fighting off a violent shiver that’s starting at the base of his spine. He really should fix the heater, like, now. 

But the wolf doesn’t seem to care about what Clint should or shouldn’t be doing. It only looks… concerned. And it continues to nudge at Clint’s legs, whining until Clint gets back into bed. Clint crawls back under the covers immediately, chasing the heat he left behind, waiting.

The wolf waits, too.

Aw, hell.

“Fine, come up here you big idiot.” Clint moves over, lifting up the covers as the wolf hoists itself onto his bed. It curls up next to him, ridiculously soft and ridiculously warm and taking up more space than any one creature should be allowed to. “Did you really just want—?”

Clint doesn’t finish his thought. It’s not like he’s going to get a straight answer anyway. But he feels a ridiculous fondness bloom in his chest at the mere thought of this wolf just wanting to keep him warm. It drapes its head across Clint’s stomach as he settles against his pillows and it’s just… so much better. His chills get chased away immediately, and he digs his fingers into the thick fur on the wolf's head, gently petting in long strokes in an attempt to convey how grateful he is.

“My own personal space heater, huh?” Clint says, more to himself than anything. 

But the wolf lets out an amused huff of air, and Clint lets himself drift back to sleep. 

Clint doesn’t fix the heater right away, spending a few days wrapped up in all the clothes he can get his hands on. He wears three pairs of socks and wraps a horribly orange scarf he didn’t even know he had around his neck, ignoring the way the wolf looks as though it wants to rip it right off of him. Clint just sticks his tongue out at the expression, and carries on sipping at his hot coffee and keeping his ice cold hands wrapped around the warm mug.

He may or may not have an ulterior motive for keeping the house cold. 

“What are you looking at?”

The wolf blinks up at him where he's perched on the kitchen island. His ass is cold from the granite countertop and he really is sick of his bones aching from all the shivering he's been doing. But not having to sleep alone the past few nights has been… comforting. Monumental. He's being spoiled with close physical contact after so long without and he's afraid that if he fixes the heater he's gonna lose it. 

Clint groans internally. Pathetic.

“Don't you have to pee or something?”

The back door is wide open—because really what does the outside chill matter when it's colder inside?—but the wolf hasn't made any move to leave for its morning run. Its ears are flat against its head, tail thwacking the floor. The air feels awkward, tense—but it's not like the wolf is gonna tell Clint anything. Unless it chewed up one of his shoes and feels guilty about it. Maybe this is just a really vague wolf apology.

Then it barks at him.

Clint didn't even know wolves could bark before this whole mess. And they don't, not really, they're more like domestic cats in that way where their standard vocalizations are limited to infancy and only use them in adulthood to communicate with humans. Clint looked it up. He wanted to know why his wolf wasn't howling. 

( _His_ wolf? Oh, boy.)

“C’mere.”

It still shocks Clint when the wolf listens, stalking forward as Clint hops off the counter to meet it halfway and bury his sweater-paw hands into the thick fur around the wolf’s neck. 

“Stop pouting. We’re fine. We're safe. We got each other, okay?”

The wolf licks his face, then his neck. It really is like having a giant dog for company. Clint trusts the wolf enough to wrap his arms around its neck, to linger in a hug and chase the warmth it gives off. The wolf doesn't object, doesn't squirm or growl. 

“Go for your run. I'll still be here when you get back.”

Clint accidentally falls asleep on the couch, and is woken up by the sound of a toilet flushing. His neck hurts from the angle he fell asleep at and his ear hurts from his hearing aid being pressed into it. It's got to be somewhere around 5AM, if the dim grayness of pre-dawn is anything to go by. Clint stretches his spine, letting himself collapse sideways onto the couch, and—

_A toilet flushing?_

Clint sits up violently, his back cracking all over again. He reaches for the bow he keeps tucked underneath the couch and the arrows that he stuffed in between the cushions. 

Aw, hell, he thought he was _safe_ here. 

Clint's first thought as he tiptoes down the hallway to the bathroom is that they must've gotten to Natasha. Hydra must want him really badly if they've gotten information out of Nat of all people. His stomach drops out at the thought of it, his vision nearly swimming with unshed tears. But he forces himself to focus on the potential threat, on the possibility of more. Clint switches his brain into danger mode and tightens his grip on the riser of his bow.

He gets to the bathroom door, finds it closed. What the fuck kind of assassin uses the— actually, never mind, Clint’s done it. There was this really fancy bathroom in Bombay with an automatic flusher and bidet with a sensor. There were six kinds of hand soaps and ten settings on the faucet nozzle—

Shit, there's someone in his house. Okay. He wishes he'd put his boots on.

Kicking the door down isn't hard, which makes Clint think he needs to get better hinges. The figure in the bathroom turns around instantly, stunned, and Clint doesn't hesitate to put one arrow in their leg, effectively disabling them. They fall to the ground in a heavy crumple of limbs, groaning through the pain. Clint nocks his second arrow, draws back, and aims between the intruder’s eyes. 

“No, wait—!”

“Give me one good reason.”

Clint's fatal flaw is his hesitation. He’s constantly being hindered by his inability to act quickly, by his blind faith and the overwhelming inclination to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. It's nearly gotten him killed dozens of times, it's put him in the hospital more times than that. On rare occasions it saves an innocent life, gains him a life-long friend, and that overbalances the other occurrences every time. And next time, because there's always a next time, he finds himself on the wrong end of the barrel of a gun.

In the moments that the intruder stays silent, it gives Clint time to take stock of them. They've got long brown hair, dark brown eyes, missing their left arm. They're completely naked, which Clint does an internal double take at, and— He studies the intruder’s face more carefully, wades through the mud of his sleepy brain. This person looks so, _so_ painfully familiar… 

“Oh, what the _fuck—?”_

“Let me explain!”

Clint rolls his eyes. Without the metal arm it's harder to parse out, but Clint has looked the ghost story right in the eyes on more than one mission. S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra, constantly and secretly at odds, sending their two top operatives on the same missions over and over… It became a game of cat and mouse in which Clint was the mouse and made it out alive on pure dumb luck each time. 

“Who sent you here?”

“I—” The Soldier puts his hand up in a surrender, which is sure as hell something Clint has never seen him do. “No one.”

“The Winter Soldier doesn't just show up for no reason. S.H.I.E.L.D. is dust and Hydra is exposed and I'm sure that your bosses would love my head on a silver platter. So I'm gonna ask you again, who sent you here?”

“I'm not the Soldier,” he says in a rush. Which, okay, liar. “Well, I was. But I'm not. I'm— Barton, please put the bow down and let me explain.”

Clint barely has time to think, _Oh fuck he knows my real name_ , before the Soldier is up on his feet. And just like always, Clint hesitates. And he blinks. And he misses it.

Between one blink and the next, the Soldier is gone and the only thing standing in Clint’s bathroom is the wolf. _His_ wolf.

Nope.

Clint turns around, walks up into his bedroom, shuts the door, and doesn't come out for twenty four hours. 

When Clint finishes pouting, he's come to the conclusion that his life is very fucked up. He's leaning towards the theory that he's in a sort of _The_ _Truman Show_ situation in which everything that happens to him is carefully calculated for someone else's amusement. Or to just make him go insane. Either way, he's not going to dwell on the fact that he rescued a dog out of the goodness of his heart only for it to actually be a wolf who’s actually a werewolf who’s actually the Winter Soldier. 

Clint’s surprised that he's even still alive. Two weeks with the world’s deadliest assassin living right under his nose and he lives to tell the tale! And you'll never believe what happens next! We'll be right back after a message from our sponsors.

Clint stomps down the stairs to announce his arrival on the off chance that the Soldier has stuck around. There's no sign of him in the living room or the kitchen, where Clint pulls his sweatshirt sleeves over his hands and hits the coffee machine a couple times until it groans to life. He groans along with it.

“Sweet, sweet nectar of life please don't let me down today. I need you more than ever.” Oh, those are song lyrics aren't they? Clint finds the melody somewhere in his sleep muddled mind. “ _And we’ll only be making it right… ‘Cause we'll never be wrong! Together we can make it—”_

“Barton?”

Clint jumps about a foot in the air, nearly dislodging the half full carafe from the coffeemaker. 

“Jesus, fuck.” Well, they don't call him a ghost story for nothing. “You're still here?”

The Soldier looks different today than he did yesterday. His hair is tied up into a bun that's already starting to fall apart, and he's wearing clothes. Clint's clothes. Those are his favorite running shorts. Not that he runs in them, but still. It's what they were made for. 

The only thing that hasn't changed is the arrow protruding from his thigh that Clint so valiantly shot him with last night. 

And it's odd, to see him like this— out of his leather bondage get up and in civilian clothes. His metal arm clearly did most of the heavy lifting when it came to the intimidation factor, and the other half was probably the mask that covered the entire bottom of his face. The twist of his mouth gives away a lot, and—

Clint squints at him, doing an entirely different once over as an entirely different set of gears in his brain start to turn. The set of his jaw, the hunch of his shoulders, his impossibly beautiful face… 

Clint's mouth drops open and he lets out a strangled sound before the Soldier can probably even form half a thought. His brain takes him through half a dozen flashbacks of comic books and war journals and school textbooks. He knows this face, he _knows_ it the way anyone with a fifth grade education knows it.

“Holy fucking shit, you're Bucky Barnes.”

“I—” The Soldier— Barnes— _Bucky,_ is visibly uncomfortable with Clint's epiphany. “Yeah, so I've been told. Can we talk?”

“Dude… what the _fuck_.”

Clint is going to need more coffee.

Apparently _what the fuck_ is that when Bucky Barnes fell from a train in the Swiss Alps he was found by Hydra and turned into their perfect little murder puppet. He doesn't remember much of anything aside from falling, being at the fall of the Triskelion, and whatever horrific scattered memories he's collected since being brought to the farmhouse. He informs Clint that he doesn't even remember the circumstances under which he arrived, only that he'd woken up in his wolf form tended to and cared for, and that he'd felt safe for the first time in a long time and didn't want to ruin it. He says it all while picking at a loose thread on the shorts he’s borrowed, alternating between nervous tugging and sudden realization that they aren’t his pants before getting anxious enough that he forgets again. He’s clearly scared of something—Hydra, Clint, being alone—and whatever it is has clearly been weighing on him all this time.

When he finishes, Clint doesn’t really know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. He just stares for a moment, and a moment stretches into ten and the silence becomes uncomfortable. Bucky starts to squirm, but Clint _really_ doesn’t know where to start. Captain America’s old war sidekick is the Winter Soldier who is also a werewolf who has been _living in Clint’s house_ for over a month. It’s just… too much.

But there’s one thing bothering him above everything else.

“Why did you use the bathroom? I never would’ve known if you hadn’t woken me with the toilet flushing.”

Bucky blinks, eyebrows furrowing. “I’ve done it before. You usually just sleep through it.”

“I'm… hard of hearing.” He points at his hearing aid. “I didn't usually hear it because I sleep on my good ear most of the time. I just—” This really isn't important but it's bugging Clint to hell. “ _Why?_ Why did you _go?”_

The Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes, the _werewolf on his sofa_ stares blankly at him.

“I really had to pee and you keep all the doors double bolted. Wolves don't exactly have thumbs.”

“Why didn't you just shift to unlock the door instead of risking waking me up?”

“What if the alarm went off?”

“They don't go off from the inside.”

“I… didn't know that.”

“You could've just not flushed.”

“Oh.”

The silence that ensues is deafening. Is Clint smarter than the Winter Soldier?

“I'm not…” Bucky pauses, a frustrated look taking over his features. 

Clint waits him out, understanding how hard it can be to get your thoughts in working order when under scrutiny. When your brain’s been scrambled long past eggs and more into goo territory. After a moment, Bucky seems to figure it out.

“I'm not the Soldier anymore,” he says carefully. “Sure, I'm potentially dangerous but so are you. 'm not here to kill you; I don't _want_ to kill you. And for the first time in seventy years i get to make that decision. Besides, even though I might not be _all_ there when I'm a wolf… I remember all of it. You saved my life and I stayed because I was—I _am_ —grateful. And you're nice. And I thought we could both use the company. Right?”

Clint bites on the inside of his cheek. “... Right.”

Clint thinks back to the fear he had when coming here, to the thought of having nowhere else to go. He thinks of the fear when the blood stained dog snapped at him, at the thought of letting it die. But he also thinks of the company, of not having to be alone with his thoughts, of the wolf—of _Bucky_ —humoring his nonsensical rambling. Bucky showed an immense display of trust in letting Clint bring him back here, letting Clint touch him and care for him. He offered comfort and warmth and mostly importantly didn’t try to rip out Clint’s throat in the middle of the night. And Clint is fairly certain that there are a few Hydra agents that would like to do that to him right now, unprovoked. 

And with that, Clint had this place to come to. What option would Bucky have, whose home is seventy years in the past?

“You didn’t go to Steve—?” He means it as a statement, as thinking aloud, but it comes out as a question and Bucky is answering before he can correct himself.

“He’s not… It’s not an option. Not right now, at least. I’m not the person he tried to save. I don’t…” He looks at Clint, eyes pleading with a silent question that Clint does not have the answers to. “I don’t even know who I am anymore. All I know is that it's safe. Here. With you. But I understand if you don’t want me here, it’s not exactly—”

Clint groans. “Don’t. Don’t do that. You don’t have—” Clint looks around the room, avoiding eye contact and trying to avoid whatever feelings are bubbling in his chest. “You don’t hafta leave, okay?”

“Okay.” Bucky’s quiet for a moment, then his hand comes to rest on Clint’s, tentative and unsure. “Hey, Barton?”

Clint looks up at him, fucking confused as all hell, but he _knows_ they’ve fostered a connection here, in the aftermath of their lives falling to ruin. Here in the rubble of everything they once knew, they have each other, and neither of them are ever going to be able to forget it. Whatever happens, they’re here now, and Clint can either let it go—let _Bucky_ go—or try to hold onto it and see what comes of it.

“It’s Clint.”

At the very least, he’s adding another former Russian assassin to his collection.

“Clint,” Bucky says, smiling gently. “Are you gonna help me get this arrow out of my leg?”

Playing house with—former Winter Soldier, current werewolf—Bucky Barnes wasn’t exactly something Clint had ever foreseen in his future, but it was certainly never off the table.

Because apparently anything’s possible these days.

Now that Bucky isn’t walking around on four—well, three—legs, he starts helping around the house. After his arrow wound heals at a spectacular rate, he takes it upon himself to make sure the dishes are always clean, and Clint’s stray clothes are always either in a laundry basket or folded neatly on the chair in his bedroom. It's kind of annoying how helpful he is, because Clint’s coffee and groceries start restocking themselves and the garage is suddenly organized and when he goes to clean his guns they're already—

“ _Barnes!”_

Clint storms up from the basement, getting no satisfaction of a slamming door as it clicks gently shut behind him. He hates this automated shit. Sure, it's secure, but he's _frustrated_ and wants to rattle some hinges sometimes.

Then again, maybe it's best that he can't. 

“Yeah?”

Clint turns his head, unable to tell where Bucky’s voice is coming from. Shit, did his hearing aid die? He yanks it out of his ear and shoves it into his pocket; just one more thing to be irritated by. He stomps through the house, peering into doorways, until he gets to the kitchen. Sure enough, Bucky’s there, flipping pancakes of all things. Isn't he supposed to be a murderous assassin?

Right, right. Brainwashing. That old thing.

“Could you stop doing my chores? I'm going stir crazy and as much as I hate housework it was the only thing keeping me sane.”

He slumps down into a chair at the kitchen table, curiously peering over at the growing stack of pancakes on the countertop to Bucky’s right. They're so fluffy. Clint didn't even know he _had_ pancake ingredients. 

“Sorry.” He doesn't sound very sorry. “I thought you'd like the help after chewing my ear off with how much you hate chores.” At that, he throws an insufferable smirk over his shoulder at Clint. “Besides, I've been freeloading for weeks and I just wanted to do something to earn my keep.”

“You don't have to earn it,” Clint says as Bucky puts down the plate of pancakes in front of him. “You were gonna die.”

Bucky hums, then brings over a steaming mug of coffee. The table’s already made up with forks and syrup and Clint’s favorite mug. That has to be a coincidence. Clint blinks up at him.

“That's exactly my point, Barton. You saved my life. I was just trying to return the favor.” He sits down and grabs a few pancakes for himself. “But if it makes you less crazy then we can switch off. Days or chores, I don't mind.” 

Clint doesn't know what to do with all that, with knowing he saved someone from a certain death. And it's not like he hasn't done that before, it's kind of his job as an Avenger. He did it for Nat. He did it for Barney. 

He did it for Bucky Barnes, Cap’s best friend. 

He did it for the Winter Soldier, the most deadly assassin of the last century.

So Clint just stuffs his face with the Winter Soldier's fluffy pancakes and says, “Fine. But keep your hands off my guns.”

Bucky gives him an unimpressed look. 

“Hand.”

They fall into an easy routine—as easy as two assassins with trust issues and PTSD can manage—and consequently a sort of camaraderie. Because it's not just tolerance; Clint isn't just putting up with the impromptu house guest. Bucky talks to him like he _knows_ him and it's hard not to reciprocate. The guy cooks breakfast more often than not, he doesn't complain about what Clint decides to watch, he helps out around the house, keeps the spare bedroom tidy, and still goes for his morning runs in his wolf form. 

But Clint can't help be a little disappointed every time he turns back when he comes through the door. 

Losing his personal space heater meant that Clint had to trudge down to the boiler and find out what the problem was. Then he had to actually _solve_ that problem so that he didn't freeze to death in the night. And the heat returning meant that Bucky didn't have a reason to share a bed with Clint anymore, wolf form or not, and he seems to prefer his human form these days. He prefers being Bucky. Clint can't exactly fault him for that, not when he hasn’t been Bucky for the better part of a century.

He just… misses his wolf a little bit, that's all. 

Most of all he misses the casual midday cuddles, the nonsensical rambling without the fear of being judged. Bucky has a bit of a judgy face, even if he doesn't actually _say_ anything. So Clint sticks to his side of the couch when they watch _Bake Off_ and keeps his thoughts to himself and curls up with every pillow he can find when he gets into bed at night.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asks one day in the middle of an episode. 

Clint doesn't even know what's happening; he must've spaced out hard. 

“I'm fine,” he says automatically. 

“You sure?” Man, the Winter Soldier is awfully pushy. “You looked a little… lost there for a bit.”

He doesn't elaborate, but Clint can imagine he understands. There are days when he doesn't see Bucky at all, and he can only imagine the shit he's working through that pale in comparison to Clint being a little touch starved. 

“Dissociating. Happens sometimes. I've been thinking too much lately, I should probably quit it.” Clint turns off the subtitles on _Bake Off_ and takes out his hearing aid. Sensory overload isn't going to help if he's already this stressed. “I might fall asleep, let me know what happens.” 

Clint stares unseeingly at the television, grabs one of the couch pillows and hugs it close. He really misses Bucky being a wolf. It was so much easier. 

Because Bucky is so _nice_ and he's so calm and grounding as a human. Clint imagines the wolf only exacerbated all of that, but he still finds himself comforted by Bucky’s presence. On top of that, he's not exactly horrible to look at. Or stare at. And Clint wants to cuddle his human form, too, and not just because he _needs_ it, but because he wants it. He wants Bucky, just a little bit. Is that crazy?

“Clint.”

Clint startles at the call of his name. But it's Bucky. It's just Bucky. Bucky who’s looking at him with the utmost concern.

“Yeah?”

“You're not okay,” he says simply. “I can smell how stressed you are. Can I help? Do you want me to go?”

“No!” Clint says it a little too fast, a little too eagerly. “No, don't go. You— you can _smell_ it?”

Bucky taps his nose with a small smile. “Wolf thing. Even when I'm not a wolf. Honestly it makes me feel more like a service dog than anything; I can smell a panic attack a mile off.”

“So you can—”

“Yeah. Seriously, is there something I can do to help?”

Clint quickly runs through his options, and none of them look promising. He can either continue to play it off and run the risk of actually psyching himself out into a panic attack, which would probably be humiliating. Or he can tell Bucky the truth about how he just wants to be held, which sounds equally humiliating. 

“I miss you being a wolf.”

Apparently option C is just as humiliating, because Bucky fixes him with a stare that's equal parts confused and concerned. 

“It's not—” Clint tries, but the words get stuck in his throat. Oh god, Bucky’s gonna think he has some kind of wolf fetish, probably. He's not in _love_ with the wolf, it was just _easier_. Easier than this: actually having to communicate, to have to be perceived by a whole other person. With the wolf Clint was able to just be himself, a carefully organized mess who just sometimes needs a cuddle goddamnit. “I'm just bad at this. Needing things. Asking. When you were a wolf I didn't have to ask you just _knew_. You knew what I needed and you— Fuck, it's crazy, right? I'm crazy.”

Yep, definitely crazy.

“You're not crazy. And it's not that I don't know anymore.” Bucky reaches his hand into Clint's space but stops just shy of his knee. “You're very easy to read, but I just wasn't sure if you wanted _me_ climbing into your bed at night and dropping my head into your lap all the time. As me. Especially since I've grown kind of… attached to you.”

Clint’s mouth drops open. 

“Sorry, is that weird?”

“Everything about this is weird, Barnes. Including but not limited to your wolfy instincts and super-nose.”

“I can change back if you want me to.”

Clint may be a self involved son of a bitch but he can be incredibly perceptive when he wants to be. “You hate being a wolf.”

“I—” He makes to protest, but seems to think better of it. “I don't mind it, but it's not my favorite thing in the world. Reminds of me of what Hydra turned me into. They favored the wolf more often than not, especially for more… brutal missions.”

“How'd you become a werewolf anyway?” Clint asks, panic forgotten. “They do that to you?”

“I was, uh, born a wolf. It's genetic. My whole family are—were. We all were. As long as we could remember, both sides of the family.” Bucky seems to get caught in a memory. He's looking at Clint but his mind is elsewhere. “We—my sister and I—grew up in Indiana for the most part. After Mom died we moved around a lot, then when Dad died I went into the Army. I haven't seen Becca since then. I'm sure she's lived her whole life by now.”

Clint knew on a fundamental level that Bucky must've lived a whole life before this one, before Hydra took everything from him and turned him into something he himself didn't recognize. His memories seemed to have come back tenfold in the weeks since he's no longer had to hide behind his wolf form and they must be tearing him apart. Clint can't imagine having to relearn who you are, having to finally remember everyone you've ever loved only to realize they're all gone. 

“M’sorry. Makes my little freak out seem trivial now…” He's embarrassed that he’s been using Bucky as a crutch when the man was clearly the one needing the comfort and support. “You can talk to me y’know? You don't have to go it alone. You've been there for me and I— I get it. I've lost my whole family now, even my brother. I grew up in a literal circus and S.H.I.E.L.D. snatched me up the moment I was of age. I've been an agent ever since, doing their bidding. Kinda makes me an asshole since I did it all voluntarily.”

“You thought you were working for the good guys.”

“That don’t make anything I did any less shitty. We were fighting the same war from opposite sides. Same puppet master. Pulling our strings.” Clint sloppily mimes marionettes. He’s an idiot. “You don’t even remember running into me, do you? I recognized you, when I caught you in the bathroom. Not as Bucky Barnes or the wolf I thought was a dog or anything. I knew you were the Soldier because you’d nearly killed me about half a dozen times.”

Bucky’s face twists up into something maybe-apologetic. “I—I don’t, no. Not yet, anyway. It’s just… Bits and pieces. People and facts. Not really events. Only the really bad ones. Losing my arm, Mom dying, the time I tried to escape and took a train from Dallas to Chicago then a bus all the way to New York—”

“You _what?”_

“Yeah.” Bucky chuckles, like it’s funny. “Let me tell you this: They didn’t like that. Not one bit.”

Clint nods. “Well, they are a bunch of Nazis, so…”

“Right. Scum of the earth. Of course they wouldn’t want their brainwashed prisoner escaping.” He smiles, then. “Well, look at me now. On the lam.”

It's so fucked up but Clint can't help but smile back. “A model escapee if I ever saw one.”

The conversation naturally tapers off and they fall into a companionable silence. Clint can’t help but feel that this talk was important, something that they should’ve had at the start when Bucky had first tried to explain who he was and how he got here. A barrier has broken now, something tenuous but precious taking its place. 

Clint looks down at Bucky’s hand resting on the couch next to his knee and tentatively grasps it in his own. Then he gives it a little tug, tugging a little harder when all Bucky gives him is a confused look. After Clint shuffles a bit closer towards him, he gets the idea and closes the gap. The closed space makes it easier for Clint to pull Bucky’s arm around his own shoulders, and he rests his head on Bucky’s chest, listening to the steady _thumpthump_ of his heartbeat with his good ear and moving with the rise and fall of his breathing. He’s so warm, as warm as Clint remembers him being as a wolf, and just as comforting. He immediately feels the tension in his chest loosen, his anxieties forgotten. He’s left with nothing but this moment, _Bake Off_ on the TV, a trustworthy companion wrapped around him.

“I know you’re not a dog,” Clint says carefully, “But you do make for really good emotional support.”

That startles a laugh out of Bucky, making him jostle Clint with the movement. “You’re so fuckin’ strange, Barton. I’m glad it was you who found me. I—” Bucky sucks in a deep, long breath. “Can I kiss you?”

The question hits Clint in the chest with all the gentleness of a sledgehammer. It’s the last thing he’s expecting on a Wednesday afternoon in his childhood home twenty-five years after he’d last been here.

“Y-Yeah. I’d…” Clint clears his throat, face flushing. “I’d honestly be real disappointed if you didn’t.”

“That’s perfect because—”

Bucky cuts himself off by pressing his lips to Clint’s, bringing his hand up to cradle the back of Clint’s head. He doesn't push or pull, just threads his fingers through Clint’s hair until he’s melting into it, forgetting everything but _this_. He forgets everything except the soft puffs of air Bucky lets out against his cheek, the solidity of his shoulder under Clint’s hand. He gets a grip into Bucky’s— _his,_ actually—sweatshirt, pressing closer to Bucky even though they’re _already pressed flush together_. Clint can’t get enough, of the warmth of Bucky pressed against him, of the hand gently tugging on strands of his hair, of Bucky’s mouth eagerly meeting his like he’s been wanting this for more than the minute since he asked. 

Clint didn’t even _know_ he wanted this, but fuck if he’s ever going go without it after this.

He pulls back just enough so that his forehead is pressed against Bucky’s.

“I’m glad it was you, too.”

And he really fucking means that.

“Morning.”

Clint stops in his tracks, bleary and rumpled and unbelievably grumpy because _what fucking time is it?_ He slept brokenly, in and out of nightmares and in and out of his clothes, alternating between frozen-as-fuck and melting-to-death. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He might be having one of his subconscious premonitions about bad shit coming. He’s not at all in the right mindset to comprehend the cheery tone of Bucky’s voice from where he sits at the kitchen table, sipping coffee from Clint’s favorite mug like he hasn’t got a care in the world.

“Huh?” Clint says, a little aggressively and maybe a little too loud. He forgot his hearing aid when he stumbled out of bed and his good ear isn’t really doing a good job at being his good ear. 

“Morning,” Bucky says again in the same tone. “Coffee’s still hot.”

Clint nods, but he just… doesn’t have the energy. He slumps down at the table and drops his head into his folded arms. He feels like his strings have been cut and he’s probably not going to be able to stand up again anytime soon. Not even for coffee. 

Oh, this is bad.

Clint whimpers.

“Bad night?”

“The worst.”

There’s a scrape and shuffle and the sound of liquid hitting a cup. Then a mug sliding across the wood of the table makes a muffled sound until it hits Clint’s elbow. By the time Clint can even lift his head up, Bucky is gone, and Clint can’t hear him anymore.

Yeah, he wouldn’t want to be around himself either right now. 

Clint takes a long pull of his coffee, suffering through the burn of it until the cup’s half empty. It tastes awful, just the way he likes it. 

Then, and _then_ , much to his surprise, Bucky returns to his seat on the opposite side of the table. He offers his hand, palm up, and in it sits Clint’s hearing aid. 

Well, what else can Clint do besides burst into tears at that?

“Ah, fuck, sorry.” He scrubs at his face and manages to hold in the sobs but his eyes are still leaking like a motherfucker. “I don’t— Thanks. Thank you.” He takes his hearing aid from Bucky and fits it into his ear, fiddling with it until the sound of Bucky awkwardly tapping on his own mug comes into focus. His ‘good’ ear is still acting up but at least everything doesn’t sound like he’s listening from another room anymore. 

Is it horrible to sometimes wish that he was completely deaf?

“It’s okay. Come here.”

Clint doesn’t even ask what the fuck he means before he’s dragging himself from his own chair and straddling Bucky in his. Sticking his nose into Bucky’s neck feels like the most natural thing in the world, feeling Bucky’s arm come around his waist feels like coming _home_. Maybe he wasn’t so touched starved for anyone as he was just really fucking enjoying Bucky’s company. He doesn’t want this with anyone else. He thinks that if _had_ been someone else they wouldn’t have gotten past the awkward phase of _oh fuck I wasn’t cuddling with a wolf I was cuddling with you_. Because Bucky gets Clint (he thinks) and Clint gets Bucky (most of the time) and maybe this is super weird but Clint doesn’t _care._ He takes a deep breath, wondering if Bucky’s scent being so calming is a wolf thing or a Bucky thing. Either way, Clint’s never felt safer. He doesn’t feel like crying anymore. Everything’s going to be okay.

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“S—”

“Clint!”

“Okay!” He laughs. It’s wet and it hurts but he doesn’t care. “Thanks. Thank you.” He presses a kiss to Bucky’s neck, then to his lips because he can _do_ that now. It’s awesome. “Thanks for sticking around.”

“Honestly?” Bucky says rhetorically. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Clint has to ruin it, of course, “Not even home?”

But Bucky’s easy, he’s calm and it’s almost like he was expecting it. “There’s no other home for me anymore. I’ve made my peace with that.” He pulls back a little bit and Clint does the same. He probably looks a wreck with red eyes and a runny nose, but the way Bucky’s looking at him makes him think that it doesn’t really matter.

“This is my home now,” he says. “If that’s alright with you.”

Clint smiles. “It’s fucking perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> the idea in my notes app read as follows: 
> 
> ok but what if clint rescued a dog that got hit by a car and it's covered in mud so he can't really see what it is and he's on the run so he can't go to a vet but he can't leave it there and it takes a little while for the dog to trust him so by the time he can give it a bath he's really attached and HOLY FUCK THIS ISN'T A DOG IT'S A WOLF
> 
> HOLY FUCK IT'S A WEREWOLF
> 
> HOLY FUCK IT'S THE WINTER SOLDIER
> 
> HOLY _FUCK_ IT'S BUCKY BARNES
> 
> ... holy fuck it's the love of my life


End file.
